The Kansas City Chiefs have basically nothing left to accomplish. They won the last Super Bowl and the Super Bowl before that. They’ve won their division every year since 2015, and they haven’t finished below .500 since 2012. Their tight end is dating the most famous living American. Life is good.
How, then, do you stay motivated ahead of a season where you’ll be chasing history? If you’re quarterback Patrick Mahomes, you play with the limits of what is possible in an American football game.
Mahomes has been doing that his entire career, but on Wednesday he threatened to take things up a notch by dialing up a behind-the-back pass to running back Carson Steele during the Chiefs’ minicamp.
The two-time MVP feigned taking off running before firing a basketball-style pass in Steele’s direction, which the UCLA product deftly caught with one hand.
Mahomes previously has talked about unleashing the behind-the-back pass in a game—and he has the approval of Chiefs coach Andy Reid.
“Coach Reid wants me to throw it behind-the-back more than anyone in the world,” Mahomes said on a First Things First appearance in May. “He deliberately puts in plays that when I have the opportunity to throw it. It’s not a coaching thing, it’s me not having that confidence to do it in the game. One of these games, man. We gotta do it. There’s too much hype in it. Hopefully it’s to Travis [Kelce].”
Kansas City opens its season on Sept. 5 against the Baltimore Ravens. We’ll see whether the pass comes with it.
Kansas City Chiefs wide receiver Rashee Rice has had a tumultous offseason after winning the Super Bowl as a rookie.
First, on April 10, police charged Rice with aggravated assault, collision involving serious bodily injury, and six counts of collision involving injuries for his alleged role in a hit-and-run crash in Dallas. Then, on May 7, police in the same city named Rice asa suspect in an alleged nightclub assault.
On Saturday, Rice addressed his legal issues for the first time in Kansas City.
"I've learned so much from that," he told gathered reporters. "All I can do is mature and continue to grow from that. This is a step in a better direction for me."
Rice and other Chiefs wide receivers hosted the Dream Big Youth Football Camp on Saturday morning at Kansas City's Central Park.
"Accidents and stuff like that happen, but all you can do is move forward and walk around being the same person, try to be positive so that everybody can feel your love and your great energy," he said.
In 2023, Rice caught 79 passes for 938 yards and seven touchdowns.
We’re into the month of the schedule being released and spring practices (aka OTAs) starting, so let’s get into it …
• The New England Patriots’ expectation, I believe, is coming closer to reality, with the team honing in on finalizing its football operations structure for 2024.
With the blessing of the league office, New England punted on hiring a “primary football executive” in January. That role had been filled by coach Bill Belichick, was vacated upon his firing and wasn’t conferred over to Belichick’s replacement on the coaching side, Jerod Mayo. The idea from ownership here, as we explained in January, was to do a thorough vetting of the football operation as it stood, before making big-picture decisions post-draft.
Why? Well, because the Krafts felt like, to a large degree, Belichick’s shadow had been cast for years over capable people in the scouting department. From the selection of N’Keal Harry over Deebo Samuel and A.J. Brown in the first round in 2019, to a mass exodus of personnel folks right around that time, it was apparent to ownership that Belichick’s decisions didn’t always jibe with the evaluations of his scouts.
So Robert and Jonathan Kraft resolved to give the guys in-house, whom they liked, a chance to show what they had without that shadow enveloping them. They moved Eliot Wolf—son of Hall of Fame executive Ron Wolf, and with experience as the No. 2 with two different franchises—into the top role, leapfrogging him over director of player personnel Matt Groh with the belief that Wolf was best prepared and suited for a GM-type of job.
As such, Wolf got a three-month audition to show what he had, with Groh and Pat Stewart, who came up in the Patriots’ system, and was a top exec in Carolina under Matt Rhule and Scott Fitterer, as his top lieutenants. And the Krafts did leave a breadcrumb out there for anyone who wanted it, authorizing the hire of Alonzo Highsmith, who came up with Wolf in Green Bay, and went with him to work for John Dorsey in Cleveland.
And now, all signs are pointing toward Wolf landing the job in New England, to the degree where the Patriots have been turned down by prospective candidates with other teams that they’ve sought to interview (such as Buffalo’s Terrance Gray and Cincinnati’s Trey Brown), with those candidates leery that this is a done deal.
The truth being that it probably is.
• The one other detail on that to watch is how they handle the new primary football executive’s title. This will be Kraft’s 33rd season owning the Patriots, and he’s never had a general manager in title. Bobby Grier, Scott Pioli, Nick Caserio, Dave Ziegler and Matt Groh all entered the top scouting role under the title of director of player personnel. Grier and Pioli eventually ascended to vice president of the player personnel.
The last Patriots GM was Patrick Sullivan, the son of then owner Billy Sullivan. He held the title from 1983 to ’91.
Now, there would be a very real and functional reason to give someone like Wolf the title. Doing it would allow for the team to hire an assistant GM, and that title allows you to poach from another team without the other team having to let such a person out of their contract. So theoretically, the Patriots could use the GM interviews to search for an assistant GM, then use that assistant GM title to pull the candidate away from another organization.
If the Patriots were to do something like that, it’d be smart to look toward the Packers’ organization, and maybe someone like director of pro scouting Richmond Williams, to find guys who’d fit under Wolf.
• Great news from Cincinnati, where the Bengals released video of Joe Burrow, back from surgery on his throwing wrist, spinning the ball as he normally would (albeit with a sleeve over his right arm) inside the team’s practice bubble. He also told the team website that the timetable has allowed for him to have a relatively normal offseason, since he wouldn’t be throwing in earnest until OTAs, which is when he usually ramps things up anyway.
My understanding is that, through two days of throwing on-site, his velocity and deep range have been normal, and he’s in great shape, while there is a little rust and the team is monitoring his workload. I’d expect the Bengals to be careful with their franchise quarterback (with rest days, etc.), especially since he somehow still hasn’t had a full and normal offseason as a pro. Burrow lost time to ACL rehab in 2021, appendicitis in ’22 and a calf injury last summer.
Beck will be returning to Georgia for a fourth season.
Joshua L. Jones / USA TODAY NETWORK
• Every year, there’s a lot of noise in May over who the top quarterbacks will be in the following year’s draft. This year is no different. And sometimes, it can be tough to decipher what’s real, and what’s not (remember Spencer Rattler’s “stock” in the summer of 2021).
So I’d just say looking at the names, the guy I’ve heard the most real, genuine, this-guy-could-make it buzz in a class that looks just so-so right now is Georgia's Carson Beck. Scouts visiting Athens in November were alerted to the reality that he was almost certainly returning to school for a fourth season. But at that point, there was a thought that he could be taken in the top half of the first round in 2024. Making the idea of that real for ’25.
Obviously, we’ll be talking plenty about guys such as Colorado’s Shedeur Sanders and Texas’s Quinn Ewers too.
• The addition of Tyler Boyd to the Titans’ roster is a sharp one for Brian Callahan, who was together with the veteran receiver in Cincinnati. Every new head coach is well-served to have people who know the program, and the coach’s expectations, coming in. And until now, Callahan had only Chidobe Awuzie coming over from the Bengals with him.
That Boyd’s a pro’s pro only adds to the logic of the signing.
• It’s worth mentioning here, given the battle royale that’s ensued between college all-star games over the past few years, that the Senior Bowl remains at the top of the heap. Among the players who at least participated in practices at the various all-star games, the Senior Bowl had 25 of the 26 guys taken in the first two rounds (including all 10 first-rounders), and a 45-5-1 edge over the East/West Shrine Bowl and Hula Bowl, respectively, over the first four rounds.
Also, the one Hula Bowler taken in the first four rounds, Boston College CB and Arizona Cardinals third-rounder Elijah Jones, was a late injury add to the Senior Bowl, meaning he’d been high on their list. So … good job by Jim Nagy and the folks in Mobile on all of that.
• The Panthers added Rashaad Penny to a crowded running back group that already has Miles Sanders and Chuba Hubbard, which, rightfully, raised some question on the readiness of second-round pick Jonathon Brooks, who tore his ACL in November as a Texas junior.
My understanding is that Brooks will be held out of spring drills, with the expectation that he’s cleared on July 1, and starts training camp on a pitch count. That should give him a chance to play from the start of his rookie year, though he’ll have fewer early opportunities to make an impression on new coach Dave Canales and his staff. (It is worth noting that Penny was with Canales in Seattle for the first five years of his career.)
• Keep an eye on Chiefs fourth-rounder Jared Wiley. Some saw him as a top guy in the tight end group behind Brock Bowers in his class, and he turned some heads at the team’s rookie minicamp (his raw size and hands stood out). Plus, he’ll get to learn from a pretty good one.
• Not for nothing, I think the Vikings are pretty comfortable with Sam Darnold playing quarterback, which gives them flexibility with J.J. McCarthy. I’d also expect that Kevin O’Connell will have a detailed set of markers for McCarthy to hit as he tries to compete to become the starter. So if he does, that’s great news for the team. And if he hits the normal rookie speedbumps, that’s O.K. too, with Darnold in tow.
• Justin Simmons is one current free agent I’d be calling if I were a team.
Kansas City Chiefs general manager Brett Veach believes Travis Kelce isn't slowing down as the star tight end prepares to enter year 12 in the NFL.
The Chiefs on Monday signed Kelce to a new, two-year extension worth $34.25 million, making him the highest-paid tight end in the league. After making the deal official, Veach spoke to the media on a Zoom call, telling reporters he believes the veteran tight end is the rare type of player who can play well into his thirties.
"The odds of someone playing this far into the thirties are very low, but it does happen, and it happens with just unicorns in the profession, and Travis is one of those and we'll certainly celebrate this with him and hopefully we can ride this thing even longer," Veach said. "So, we'll just have to wait and see. But I've seen no signs of [Kelce] slowing down and everyone notices the kind of postseason he had, and he just found that extra gear and these special ones, these special players are always able to find that extra gear. If anybody could do it, Travis can.''
"Today we had the chance to get out there [on the field] for 'Phase 2,' and Travis was the first guy in line."
Brett Veach spoke about Travis Kelce's remarkable consistency and longevity earlier today. pic.twitter.com/ChTh16LYHp
Kelce, who will turn 35 in October, produced 984 receiving yards in 2023, his lowest output since the 2015 season. However, the star tight end still led Kansas City in receptions and yards during the regular season, then turned things up a notch in the postseason, racking up 32 catches for 355 yards and four scores while helping the Chiefs win their second straight Super Bowl.
Kelce missed the opening game of the 2023 regular season due to a knee injury, his first missed game due to injury since 2014.
Perhaps in an effort to take some of the load off of Kelce, Kansas City signed free agent wide receiver Marquise Brown to a one-year deal in March, then selected Texas receiver Xavier Worthy in the first round of the 2024 NFL draft this past Thursday.
In 11 seasons, Kelce has amassed 907 receptions for 11,328 yards and 74 touchdowns. He is the NFL's all-time leader in postseason receptions.